Officially, my workday runs from 9-to-5 (although I’m willing to make exceptions where needed). Unofficially, it runs for much longer than that, because I’m pretty much always reading blogs, either in my industry or my client’s industries.

But as I read these blogs, I begin to notice a trend. Most of them are great, full of interesting information, new points of view on subjects I’ve considered in the past, or insight into subjects that have been confusing me for awhile.

However, there are three things in particular that ruin an otherwise good blog post for me. In the interest of commiserating with people who are annoyed by the same things as I am (or maybe warning people who do them), here’s what they are:

Awkward SEO Keyword Placement

I can’t always blame the writer for this. I used to work at a content mill, and sometimes they’d give me some sort of off the wall, grammatically incorrect phrase and force me to use it a certain number of times, no matter how poorly it actually fit in.

But just because I know why it happens doesn’t mean I like reading it.

I understand the importance of making your content search engine optimized. But as I’ve discussed before, that optimization should never come at the cost of the content itself. And if you choose to willingly publish sloppy writing in the hopes of getting it seen by more people, it becomes clear to me that your content isn’t your priority — so why should I read it?

Overly Academic Writing

At first glance, this seems like it would be the exact opposite of the first point. But at the end of the day writing in an over academic style tells me the same thing as stringing simple SEO phrases together — you don’t care if people actually read your content or not.

Think about it: if you’re focusing on nothing but SEO writing, you don’t care if the people reading actually stick around. You just care if they click on it. But if you use every blog post as a chance to show off your vocabulary, you don’t care if the people reading actually understand what you’re saying. You just care that they know how smart you are.

Both are equally infuriating.

Outdated Memes and Inappropriate GIFs

Memes and GIFs have a place. But your article on best business practices isn’t one of them.

I understand that I might be alone in this. But nothing annoys me more than reading through a list that’s full of well thought out, properly cited information … that’s peppered with Spongebob gifs and whatever the latest meme is. It just makes it impossible to take the content seriously.

Plus, memes have an unfortunate tendency of dating a work. They’re like fireworks, brilliant and impossible to ignore … for about five seconds. Then they just look sort of silly. And no matter how certain you are that you’re using them correctly, the chance of using them incorrectly is high. It’s like trying to use slang in a language you aren’t quite fluent in.

Do any of you have pet peeves when it comes to the blogs you read? Feel free to share!